Aperture Foundation

Bad news for those planning to do anything other than look at art this week: Your week is fucked. It’s Armory Week, which for art professionals and lovers alike means a marathon of art-viewing practically guaranteed to hurt your eyes at some point. There’s treatment for these kinds of injuries, but the best advice we can offer is to simply be careful out there.

Adam Szymczyk, the director of Documenta 14, gets a write up in the Times for ‘his championing of unknown artists.’ He’s curated solo shows by Aleksandra Domanovic, Moyra Davey, and Lucy Skaer, so that’s a good track record. [The New York Times]

Seapunk aesthetic for your tombstone? That and much more at Funeral Concept, a place that appears to specialize in the funerary objects for the young. [Funeral Concept]

Paris Photo, which concluded Sunday, drew over 55,000 visitors this year. Carole Naggar wraps it up on TIME Light Box with a selection of mostly black and white documentary-style images from the 20th century, and notes that it rained inside the fair briefly. [TIME]

On that topic, Wired did a Q&A with Leslie Martin, publisher of the Aperture book program. She makes it clear that the publishing industry is in flux: “There are 20 books in the Paris-Photo/Aperture First Book shortlist and 14 of them are self-published.” [Wired]

Looks like the Ad Reinhardt show organized by critic Robert Storr at David Zwirner is a must see. [The New York Times]

An interesting concept from the Times: Retro Report; The truth now about stories then. The short video segments cover stories about 10-15 years old—the stuff that hasn’t quite left your consciousness, but isn’t exactly fresh either. Y2K is a pretty good example of this, a story that lives somewhere on the edge of nostalgia. [Retro Report]

Despite the occasional mad rant or impromptu bathing session, riding the MTA today is generally a much tamer prospect than it was in 1980, when Bruce Davidson began documenting the trains and its passengers. Those efforts resulted in the 1986 monograph Subway, celebrated as a frank depiction of a unique and perhaps infamous moment in New York's history. A third and final edition of the book is now available, and to mark its release, the Aperture Foundation gallery has a selection of prints on view. While the work ultimately contributes little to the conversations driving art photography today, it nonetheless stands as an anomaly in both Davidson's work and the longstanding tradition of subway photography, and as such warrants some discussion.